You are using Salesforce CPQ (configure, price, quote), but do you think your sales representatives aren’t fully utilizing this powerful sales tool? While it’s designed to assist your sales team in generating precise quotes for customers, the extensive range of features in Salesforce CPQ may remain untapped.
As leaders in the quote to cash industry, today we help you realize the five noteworthy Salesforce CPQ features that would definitely create a major impact in your sales team as well as drive revenue growth. We help many businesses from small to medium to large growth enterprises unlock their true potential and drive revenue.
Contract Amendment And Automated Renewals
The Contract Amendment and Automated Renewals feature is valuable and simplifies the management of customer contracts and helps organizations maintain ongoing relationships with their clients. Let’s delve into the key aspects of this feature;
1. Contract Amendment: Contract amendments are integral to the business world, allowing companies to change existing contracts as their needs evolve. Salesforce CPQ’s Contract Amendment feature enables sales and legal teams to handle contract modifications efficiently. Here’s how it works:
- Effortlessly modify contracts for pricing changes, add-ons, or extensions.
- Maintain version control and track contract history.
- Implement automated approval workflows for efficiency.
- Facilitate real-time collaboration between sales and legal teams.
2. Automated Renewals: Automated renewals are critical to subscription-based business models and maintenance contracts. Salesforce CPQ’s Automated Renewals feature simplifies renewing contracts, reducing administrative burden and minimizing the risk of missed opportunities. Here’s how it works:
- Automatically generate renewal quotes and contracts based on criteria.
- Send renewal notifications to sales teams in advance.
- Flexible pricing options for renewals.
- Access analytics and reporting for renewal performance insights.
- Turn renewals into an upsell/cross sell activity leveraging the richness of the Salesforce platform.
Benefits of Contract Amendment and Automated Renewals in Salesforce CPQ:
- Improved efficiency reduced manual effort.
- Increased revenue through automated renewals.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction with seamless processes.
- Compliance and risk mitigation.
- Data-driven decision-making with contract insights.
Guided Selling
Guided Selling plays a crucial role in helping sales teams sell more effectively. Guided Selling in Salesforce CPQ is like having a knowledgeable sales assistant who guides sales representatives through the complex process of creating quotes, ensuring that they offer customers the most relevant products and services. By harnessing the power of data and automation, companies can deliver a superior customer experience and stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business landscape. Here’s how:
1. Personalized Recommendations: Guided Selling uses data-driven insights to provide sales reps with customized product and pricing recommendations. It considers customer preferences, historical sales data, and current market conditions. This approach ensures that sales representatives provide customized solutions that suit individual customers’ unique needs and budgets.
2. Simplified Product Selection: CPQ Guided Selling simplifies product selection by presenting a list of recommended products and services based on customer requirements. Reducing the chances of errors and oversights makes it easier for sales representatives to create accurate quotes.
3. Cross-Selling and Upselling: With Guided Selling, sales reps can quickly identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities. The system suggests complementary products or services to enhance the customer’s purchase and increase the deal’s value. It is important to note that improving processes can significantly impact both profits and customer satisfaction.
4. Real-Time Pricing Guidance: Pricing is a critical aspect of the sales process. Guided Selling provides real-time pricing guidance to ensure that sales reps are quoting prices that are competitive, profitable, and within acceptable discount limits. This prevents over-discounting and revenue leakage.
5. Automated Rule Enforcement: Salesforce CPQ allows organizations to define business rules and pricing guidelines. Guided Selling ensures that these rules are consistently applied, reducing non-compliance risk and ensuring sales reps adhere to company policies.
6. Streamlined Collaboration: Guided Selling promotes collaboration between sales teams and other departments, such as product management and finance. Different departments can ensure the availability of appropriate products and alignment of prices and terms with company strategies by effectively receiving customer needs and preferences conveyed by sales representatives.
7. Improved Sales Training and Onboarding: Salesforce CPQ’s Guided Selling feature is valuable for new sales representatives who are still learning about the company’s products and pricing strategies. It provides them with a structured framework for creating quotes and ensures they follow best practices.
8. Data-Driven Insights: The system gathers data on sales interactions and outcomes, which can be analyzed to further refine the guided selling process. This enables continuous improvement and helps organizations adapt to changing market conditions.
Product and Pricing Rules
Within Salesforce CPQ, four product rules are available to admins: validation, selection, alert, and filter.
- Validation Rules: These rules act as gatekeepers, preventing sales teams from saving an incompatible quote configuration. They ensure that only valid product combinations are included in a quote, minimizing errors and ensuring compliance with business rules.
- Alert Rules: Alert rules serve as gentle reminders, notifying your sales teams of important information without hindering them from saving the quote. This feature is handy for conveying critical details that might impact the customer’s decision, ensuring transparency in the quoting process.
- Selection Rules: Selection rules automate the process of selecting or deselecting products and showing or hiding them based on defined parameters. This automation streamlines the configuration of quotes, saving time and reducing the risk of human error. For example, a selection rule could automatically add complementary products when selecting a specific item.
- Filter Rules: Filter rules are instrumental in creating dynamic search filters that automatically refine the product catalog based on specific criteria. This feature simplifies the product selection process for sales reps by presenting them with only relevant options, enhancing their efficiency.
Product rules become relevant when all defined error conditions are true. For a product rule to be effective, it must have at least one error condition defined. Selection rules, in particular, require both error conditions and product actions to be specified. Product actions instruct the system on what to do when the error conditions are met.
How These Salesforce CPQ Features Benefit Businesses Across Different Industries
The new Contract Amendment, Automated Renewals, Guided Selling and Product and Pricing Rules features in Salesforce CPQ offers significant advantages across various industries, helping organizations streamline contract management and enhance customer relationships. Here’s how it can benefit different sectors:
- Manufacturing Auto and Engineering:
- Streamlines contract modifications for pricing changes, add-ons, and extensions, which are common in complex manufacturing contracts.
- Allows for complex configuration of product mixtures and can support engineer to order configuration.
- Automates the renewal process for maintenance contracts and subscription-based services, ensuring ongoing client engagement and support.
- Allows for overall agreements management with multiple actors such as resellers, distributors, wholesalers, and end consumers.
- Enables adaptation to dynamic market conditions and ensures smooth contractual transitions.
- Recommendation of machinery, equipment, and maintenance solutions based on production needs and budgets.
- Finance and Banking:
- Ensures precision in contract modifications, adhering to stringent legal requirements for financial agreements.
- Facilitates automated approval workflows, vital for navigating complex financial contracts efficiently.
- Promotes real-time collaboration between sales and legal teams for rapid adjustments to contracts.
- Recommend investment portfolios, loans, and insurance products personalized to individual financial situations and objectives.
- Communications, Media, and Technology:
- Swift adaptation to market trends and evolving customer demands, facilitated by efficient contract modifications.
- Allows for the quoting and pricing of complex mixtures of finished goods, SaaS, and Services.
- Automates renewal quotes to prevent revenue leakage and allows the renewals function to be an opportunity for up/cross sell.
- Automates and automatically prorates key amendments such as add on’s, deprecations, cancellations, and swaps of software licensing.
- Addresses the nuances of SaaS recurring revenue models for which ERP’s traditionally struggle.
- Access to analytics and reporting for insights into renewal performance, helping organizations stay competitive in these fast-paced industries.
- Provide tailored suggestions for technology solutions like advertising strategies, and communication services that align with clients’ goals.
- Health and Life Sciences:
- Ensures compliance with regulatory requirements when amending contracts. Can be applied to both payor provider and/or CRO side of the business each of which has unique regulatory requirements.
- Efficiently manages changes in support and maintenance contracts, vital for the healthcare sector.
- Enhances data-driven decision-making with contract insights for improved patient care and support services.
- Suggest medical equipment, medications, and laboratory supplies based on patient needs and scientific experiments.
- Commercial Business Services:
- Efficiently manages contract modifications and renewal processes, reducing manual effort. Applies specifically to the nuances of resource change orders, timeline extensions, and modifications in project scope.
- Ensures accuracy and compliance in a wide range of business agreements including MSA’s, NDA’s, Statements of Work, and Change Orders.
- Provides real-time collaboration for rapid adjustments, improving client satisfaction and operational efficiency.
- Streamlines the recommendation of professional services, marketing strategies, and HR solutions aligned with clients’ business needs and industry.
- Retail and Consumer Goods:
- Streamlines contract amendments, allowing flexibility in pricing and add-ons.
- Facilitates automated renewal processes for service contracts and subscription models.
- Enables cross-selling and upselling opportunities to increase revenue and customer engagement.
- Provide personalized product recommendations, enhancing the customer shopping experience and increase in sales.
By effectively harnessing these Salesforce CPQ features, you can unlock your team’s true potential, enhance customer relationships, and drive revenue growth. Ready to Transform Your Sales? Keep these powerful Salesforce CPQ features from being untapped. Contact us today to discover how we can help you implement and optimize these tools, driving sales transformation and propelling your business to new heights. Please take the next step towards maximizing your sales potential and schedule a consultation with our experts now! Your success awaits!
